


A Super Soldier Or Two

by menhir



Series: Winter Stars and Iron [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Masturbation, Multi, Oral Sex, Past Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Porn with Feelings, Tony Has A Vivid Imagination, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-07-22 21:04:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7453903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/menhir/pseuds/menhir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony has a couple of problems and their names are Steve Rogers and James Buchanan Barnes. Luckily he has quite the vivid imagination when it comes to dealing with said problems. Genius, remember?</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Super Soldier Or Two

**Author's Note:**

> This little one-shot takes place after the breakfast scene in chapter five of [Nowhere To Go But Home](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6381397). Definite spoilers if you haven't read the main fic and intend to. Otherwise this is just a bit of explicit fun and feels with Tony wondering _what if_...

The elevator doors slid shut, the pillow hit the ground, and Tony’s hand shot down the waistband of his pants. He braced himself against the steel wall and worked his palm roughly over his erection, trying to ease the pressure and buy himself some respite until he could get somewhere where he could take care of the problem properly.

For the record, sporting a hard-on while having a heart-to-heart with a pair of super soldiers was desperately humiliating. Especially when said super soldiers were confessing they wanted him and, like a certifiable crazy person, he’d turned them the fuck down. 

Fuck. What the _fuck_ was he thinking? 

The three of them could have been naked together right now if he hadn’t had the world’s most morally conscientious boner.  

“Friday, I’m going to need a clear path.” His voice was wrecked. 

“Where to, boss?”

Was there a trace of smug humor in her tone? Because this really wasn't funny. The last thing Tony needed was for a SHIELD agent to catch him wandering the halls at full mast. He'd been able to talk his way around a lot of things the last few days, but even he had limits.

“Lab.” It was the only place he could lock down without locking Rogers and Barnes out of their own living spaces.

"I've calculated a clear path," Friday said. "If you'll follow my directions, please."

Rain was pouring down the glass as Tony crossed the vacated hallways, modesty pillow firmly in place, and sought out his private elevator to the lab. His head was spinning, and the poorly engineered, mutant-bacteria he'd been shot up with certainly wasn't helping on that front. For the most part he had a handle on it, but stress and fatigue made the dizziness and lack of coordination worse. Right now he was definitely stressed. And tired. His nerves jolted now and then, like he'd touched a live wire, and his fine motor control was getting shaky. This morning he'd woken up with one hell of a headache. 

The question was: was he infectious? So far the bug’s programmed behaviors had a single-minded focus on his personal electrical systems, both implanted and biological. All tests thus far indicated it had been made to target him specifically. (Why and who had done it were other questions entirely.) He’d already ascertained the team was safe from casual contact, but Tony hadn’t run enough tests to be sure anything truly intimate wouldn’t result in a transference. Chances were good the super soldier serum would protect Rogers and Barnes, but until he knew for sure, Tony couldn’t risk anything more than what he and Barnes had already done.  

And that was only  _reason one_  for keeping them at arm’s length. 

Tony turned a corner and clipped the edge roughly as he went, stumbling a few steps before regaining his stride.

Okay, maybe he didn't have a complete handle on it. It's not like there was anything he could do about it until Friday had the treatment cleared and sent over to the lab. 

Tony wasn't sure whether he should be thrilled or concerned he could even get a hard-on in this state. It either spoke volumes for his inspiration or confirmed that he was, in fact, the world's dirtiest old man. 

Well, it had been months since Pepper. Or anyone else for that matter. And he was only human. 

Tony exited into the lab, signaling for lockdown. Taking ten minutes to jerk off wasn't quite worthy of full blackout protocols, but he didn't exactly want visitors while he had his hands down his pants, either. 

“Friday, put the kids to bed.”

Tony wasn't the self-conscious type, but even he knew there were some things you didn’t do in front of the little ones, mechanical though they may be. Although, if Tony was being honest, he had learned that lesson the hard way (pun absolutely intended). DUM-E, as it turned out, had a penchant for grabbing things he shouldn’t and U could be just as curious as DUM-E, if not nearly as injurious. So, really, it was better for everyone if they powered down in the corner for the duration. 

“And no interruptions. I mean it this time,” Tony said. “No sneaking around protocols.”

“Wouldn't dream of it, boss.” 

Yeah, right. Tony would have to formally update Friday's code if he wanted to ensure his continued privacy. But that could happen when he was done. 

He rummaged in a drawer, pulled out a bottle of lube, a cloth, and another dose of Bruce’s miracle cream (the tattoo on his inner thigh was aching again and if he was going to enjoy himself even a little he needed to treat it). He tossed both onto the sofa unceremoniously. It wasn’t going to be glamorous; he wasn’t trying to impress anyone. And he sure as hell wasn’t taking care of anyone but himself. All he needed was functionality. 

He sat back on the cushions, lifting his hips just enough to shimmy his sweats and underwear down to his thighs. Through sheer force of will, he ignored his erection just long enough to apply the numbing agent to his tattoo and wait for the tingling to wash out the dull burn. He wiped his hands, then tugged once or twice at himself, dry, and squirted a dollop of the cool jelly into his palm. He gave it a moment to warm up before wrapping his fingers around the base of his cock and sliding slowly up and down. 

His head fell back and his eyes slid shut. He let his thoughts to float back to breakfast in the Avengers' common room. Quick and dirty didn't mean it had to be entirely without charm, after all. 

_Everyone out._

Cap had been dead serious when he’d said that. And at the time Tony had been terrified. Steve wasn’t one to mince words when he was upset, and Tony had been pretty goddamn sure that getting visibly turned on by Steve's soulmate was grounds to rain down righteous judgment upon him. The very last thing Tony had expected was a confession that the two super soldiers liked him back. 

In fact, he still wasn't convinced it wasn't some cruel, elaborate prank; but... no. No words. Forget about words. No complications, no arguing. He wasn't trying to work out the truths of the universe here. All he needed was skin against skin and heat and demanding mouths and coaxing hands. 

What if Steve had cleared the room precisely so they could be alone—not to talk, but for another purpose entirely? What if, on cue, Barnes had shut Tony up with one of those searing, knee-buckling kisses? What if Steve had joined them, wrapping his arms around Tony from behind, pulling them flush together so Tony could feel just how much he wanted him. 

All right, so it was the premise for a bad porno. Tony didn't care. 

While he was at it, nix the clothes. Clothes could be plenty fun to remove when things were getting warmed up; but Tony was already more than warmed up. All it had taken was Barnes—James—leaning over him, that hand sliding around his chest and those bionic fingers tracing lines up and down his spine. Tony hadn’t gotten that hard _that fast_ since college.

He’d had plenty of massages and the occasional hard-on was a perfectly natural biological response. But in this case he didn’t have the excuse of lying naked on a table; and his reaction was about as far from an innocent biological response as you could get. It was less about _what_ had been done to him and more about _who_ had done it. 

And about what else he desperately wanted those hands to do.

Speaking of which—fantasy. Right. Where was he? 

Naked. Avengers’ common room. Empty. Affectionate super soldiers. He just needed to skip to the good part, with all of them tangled on the couch, lost in sensation and each other. 

James was sitting behind him, chest plastered to Tony's back, right arm around Tony’s waist, mouth moving against the back of his neck and tongue darting out to taste skin. Teeth grazed over his shoulder. His metal hand roamed over Tony’s body, up and down his arm and over his chest. James’ fingers trailed over the knotted scar tissue where the arc reactor used to be—a dull, distant sensation—then down, brushing over the sensitive skin just below his navel. His fingers came back up to Tony’s mouth, ghosting over the edges, requesting entry. Tony parted his lips and reveled in the smooth, heavy weight of metal pushing in over his tongue. 

Yeah, that—that was good. 

Tony twisted his hand up and over the head of his cock, calloused palm pausing to drag across the tip before sweeping back down and settling into a rhythm, his breathing picking up. 

Steve? Steve was—Tony bit his lower lip. Surely it was sacrilege to imagine Captain America on his knees between Tony’s thighs, head moving up and down at a measured pace as he took Tony progressively deeper, those blue eyes looking up at him intently from under dark lashes. 

“ _Fuck,_ ” Tony breathed. He didn’t know if he’d said it aloud or not. Not that it mattered. There was no one in the lab to hear. 

Tony dragged his thumb across the slit, picturing Steve pausing just long enough to dip his tongue into the fluid collected there, his lips forming around the head, before swallowing him back down.  

Tony groaned, his own hand moving faster. 

“I think he likes you, Steve.” James chuckled, low, warm against Tony’s neck.

Steve’s mouth was too occupied to properly smile, but Tony could feel the telltale stretch of muscle. Steve massaged the tops of Tony’s thighs with approval. 

“How long have you wanted him to do this to you?” James murmured.

Steve took that moment to pull up, mouth still open and breath ghosting over damp, sensitive skin. Tony laughed, desperate, bordering on hysterical. “Since I first discovered sex was a thing people did with each other?” Steve dove back in, swallowing Tony down as far as he could take him, and Tony shuddered. " _God_." 

James seemed surprised, which in and of itself was odd because a fantasy shouldn’t have a moral compass or memory with which to judge him. Damn his subconscious. 

“You’ve loved him that long?”

“No. Nope," he corrected. "You never said love.” Tony struggled to keep his hips still. “But want? Yeah. Give or take a few minutes where a magical scepter screwed with my perception. Kinda hard not to idolize the world’s pinnacle of goodness and manhood.” 

Howard would have killed him if he’d known his son had stolen old Howling Commandos reels to jerk off to when he was a teenager. Which, now that Tony thought about it, was probably really fucked up. At the time it had felt like an appropriate act of rebellion against the man who’d had more time for his dead war buddies than for his own son.

But there had been something sad and perfect and deeply unfair about Steve Rogers and James Barnes—how they were so different but so effortlessly in sync. The camera spotlighted Steve, and James kept to the shadows—constant and loyal. Two sides of a coin. 

It made sense now, knowing Captain America and his second in command were soulmates; but at the time Tony'd had no idea. No one did. He'd used them to assuage his own sense of loneliness and inadequacy. Captain America and his best friend had both fallen in battle, trying their damnedest to save a world that had nothing to give them in return. Tony would never be able to live up to Howard's expectations, but he might be able to live up to the example of his old heroes, who'd had to win by losing. 

A few retro fantasies involving said heroes never hurt anybody, either.

Now that Tony thought about it, a fair number of his early conquests bore a striking resemblance to one or the other of the patriotic duo. Tony had always been particular about the men he took to bed and hadn't had nearly as many male partners as female. For the first time in his life he realized why. For fuck's sake, had he been nursing a crush on Rogers and Barnes since he was a teenager? Shit. Perfect. Just perfect. No wonder he was collapsing in on himself like a dying star. 

No. Enough. Okay. 

No more thinking. Just feeling. It didn’t have to be that complicated. He just wanted to get off. This was a purely clinical exercise.

He retreated back into the fantasy.

Steve pushed Tony’s legs wider, abandoning his cock with an audible _pop_ to draw open-mouthed kisses along the soft, sensitive juncture where hip met thigh. He moved on to gently lap over the soul mark tattoo, and James reached around to replace the wet heat of Steve’s mouth with the articulated plates of his left hand, sweeping up and down Tony’s straining erection. A whine escaped Tony’s lips and he reached back over his shoulder, needing to pull James closer, to anchor himself, to confirm his support. 

Well, in reality, the back of the couch would have to do. 

“C’mon, darling. We’ve got you.” James dragged his mouth along the shell of Tony’s ear and then bit his earlobe gently. That metal hand of his was moving torturously slow, slicked with spit and lube, but the pressure was exquisite. “C’mon, baby.” James’ hips twitched forward, just enough to startle Tony into movement, encouraging him to thrust upwards into his tight grip. 

Tony used his own grip on the couch for leverage, thrusting into his hand erratically, breathing harsh.

“Yeah, just like that. Beautiful, sweetheart.” 

Steve got up and settled in beside them on the couch, leaning in to kiss James, quick and loving. Maybe just enough for James to taste the traces of Tony left behind on his tongue. Maybe just enough for Steve to draw out that plaintive, yearning sound from James that sent Tony's heart hammering. 

Oh, god. Yes. He wanted that. Even when he’d been with Pepper, Tony would have given up Christmas for one kiss from Steve Rogers. 

As if hearing Tony's thoughts—which, yes, this was all in his mind, so he had—Steve shifted and leaned over him, noses brushing, mouth hovering over Tony’s, not touching. Tony’s chest tightened. He didn’t just want this, he _needed_ it. “Steve, please.”   

“You could have had the real thing, you know,” Steve murmured. “But you turned us down.”

“Shut up. I know.” Tony wanted to pull him down and crush their lips together anyway; but figment Steve had a point. Tony knew what Barnes’ mouth felt like, and that was sinful enough, but all he could do was conjecture about Steve. What was it Steve did to pull that pleading sound out of James? Where did his focus go first? Did he start out soft and go deeper, or was he an all-in, all-at-once kind of guy? Tony could put his considerable brainpower into crafting his best estimation, but all it would be was an amalgam of kisses from former lovers, carefully blended together to trick himself into thinking it was new, authentic. 

That wasn’t what he wanted. 

So—fine then.

“Say it,” Tony begged. If he couldn’t have a kiss, maybe he could have something else. Something he’d never have a chance at in real life, even if he took Steve and James up on their offer. “Please. Just once.”

James tucked his face close, working his hand diligently over Tony's length. “What’s that, darling?” 

Tony's eyes fluttered, chest heaving. “You know what I want." The words came out ragged. “You’re figments in my goddamn head. You know what I want you to say!”

Steve took pity on him and pressed a kiss to the corner of his eye, where a suspicious amount of moisture had collected. “You’re ours, Tony,” he murmured.  

"Say it." Please, please say it.  

“That’s right,” James whispered in Tony’s ear. “You’re ours.” James’ hand sped up, twisting and squeezing just right at the tip and then sweeping back down. Tony echoed his motions, the anticipation building, curling, tipping him just to the precipice. 

_"Please,"_ he gasped roughly. Say it.  _Say it!_

“You’re our soulmate.” 

That was it. Tony came in a hot rush, hips locked, mouth open, brows drawn. He milked his orgasm until his skin became too sensitive and he had to lay back, boneless and panting, the lab spinning around him in a dizzy whirl of light and color. 

It always ended messy, didn't it? Love was nothing but a mess. 

After a minute or two Tony managed to get his feet under him and he washed up in front of the lab sink. He tossed his clothes into a laundry bin and splashed cold water on his face before pulling on a fresh shirt and sweats. He didn’t feel better. Not really. From the inside out, he was hollow and bruised and tired. Everything ached.

He rubbed the back of his stiff neck and shoulder, his headache coming back. 

He sank onto a chair and rolled himself listlessly across the floor, cuing up screens and telling Friday to wake the bots. 

Why not just tell them? Rogers and Barnes. Sure, there were some problems to navigate, but it wasn’t like being neck deep in complications wasn’t something they specialized in. They were career superheroes. Solving problems was kind of their thing. And, yeah, he was a little (a lot) scared of not living up to the Rogers-Barnes soul bond, of getting summarily rejected in the face of a timeless and epic romance; but when had getting hurt ever stopped him from going after what he wanted? Stick to what you know, right?

But, no, as convincing as those arguments were, it wasn’t just about pain and vulnerability. Although that was the excuse he'd given Steve and James. 

Tony pulled up a display of the engineered bacteria. The microbes looked innocuous until they detected a strong enough electrical signal. Then the cell walls went incandescent, shorting out anything nearby like a miniature EMP and frying his own cellular structure in its wake. The damage was minimal, and the bacteria was glitchy—it didn't fire every time. But his body could only keep up with so much. Given enough time, he'd be left with irreparable scarring to his nervous system. Loss of motor control and cognitive function. Possible paralysis.

He had a cure in the works—of course he did; he sure as hell wasn't going to sit back and let inferior biotech take him down without a fight—but if Steve and James found out about Tony’s plans to use Extremis to combat the infection, they’d try to stop him. Rightfully so. As well meaning and level headed as that was, he couldn’t afford the interference. And best not to let them get attached if he was just going to end up blowing himself up in a few days’ time. It was for their own benefit to keep the line between them drawn. 

If the Extremis gamble worked, maybe then they could figure something out. Unless he’d already burned that bridge. 

Just to be safe, he had Friday arrange to send Steve and James each a little something. Tokens. Nothing over the top. Something to show them he wasn't a completely self-absorbed asshole who enjoyed breaking super soldiers' hearts.

His head was really starting to ache, and his vision was going fuzzy, points of light scintillating around the edges. 

“Friday, any updates on the Extremis shipment?” He winced. 

“Approvals are still pending,” she said. “I estimate three more days at minimum if you want to remain discreet.”

He sat back and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Fine. Could you just... dim the lights?" He gestured. 

The harsh LEDs softened and U came over to say hello. He patted the bot and sighed.

"Friday?"

"Yes, boss?"

“Run the soul mark scan again.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I would just like to point out that Tony _could_ have taken a cold shower to deal with his problem, but I honestly don't think that occurred to him.
> 
> Keep an eye on [Tumblr](http://explodingcrenelation.tumblr.com/tagged/my-fanfic) for progress updates and sneak peeks related to this series ♡


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